Let’s be honest. In the past three years has anyone provided us Miami underground heads with better parties than the guys at LINK? I vote no. In a city so heavily dominated by DJ Mag Top 100 style bookings and VIP bottle service, the LINK group gave us dark rooms with banging house and techno beats to dance and sweat to– and anyone who has attended knows we were sweating.
This weekend marks three years that these sweaty, hedonistic dance parties have been satisfying our hunger for the underground. Like some sort of techno seeking, rhythmic zombies we have flocked to places like The Electric Pickle (the early days) and Treehouse to not only enjoy, but be a part of the movement that LINK seems to have spearheaded in Miami. I still have vivid (vividly fuzzy actually) memories of jumping on couches for Carl Craig, hours and hours spent with techno super-couple, Adam Beyer and Ida Engberg, and going to see “some guy named Shonky” who has turned out to be my favorite producer today.
Instead of me going on and on about the endless hours I’ve spent partying with these people, I decided to go out and ask a few of those on the frontlines about their thoughts on being involved with these parties throughout the years.
Rachel Tumada (Ms Mada) has resided over various LINK parties for the past seven months. She shares with us what LINK has done for her since joining the team:
“Well, I have tons of great memories being a part of the LINK team. It hasn’t even been a year since I first started with them (Sept 2011), and I’ve had so many doors opened to me, it’s insane!
Since my time with them, I can’t name a more rewarding experience than my time working with LINK at Treehouse during conference. Wow, talk about insanity to the highest degree. Working almost every day at the club was as stressful and chaotic as you can imagine– working crowd control on hundreds of people piling up at the door, all of them trying to get in through a guest list simultaneously, etc. But the stress and the work seriously paid off. I met so many agents, artists, managers and other industry people that it’s really exposed me to the other side of the music business, which I never even considered looking into before.
That entire 10-day soiree has been my highlight thus far with the LINK team. I’m looking forward to many more rewarding experiences just like that one in the future. Happy Birthday LINK!”
Another LINK resident, Andres Line (Hardline) shares an insight into what he thinks about not only LINK itself, but what the group has done for Miami’s underground:
“In 2006, when I met Maurizio, Danyelino, and later on Davide, Danny and the rest of the family, I never thought that I was going to be sharing with them, now, the outcome of a scene we all envisioned at that time.
Miami’s underground scene evolution process has been so natural that it has left the ones feeding it priceless knowledge and experience, and LINK surely makes part of it.
LINK is only three now, but the people behind it had been working on the scene for years before and I feel so happy that I have been able to enjoy all of LINK’s becoming process for all these years.
One of the biggest rewards for me throughout the way has been meeting great people, partners, venues, music lovers and others, which fill this scene with the life energy that makes it so fun and sometimes so dramatic.
I don’t envision a healthy underground scene in Miami anymore because we are already enjoying probably the healthiest scene in America, but the motivation of doing it bigger and better every time makes me so grateful to be able to continue sharing a vision with the people behind LINK and its partners to make Miami a year-round, top electronic music destination.”
The aforementioned Maurizio, Maurizio Ruggiero, recollects the primordial early days when he linked (pun definitely intended) up with the other two-thirds of the original LINK team:
“One thing that I must be thankful for, was this awakening I had around 2003 when I was freelancing between mainstream clubs like Opium Group venues, Nikki Beach and Bed. I said to myself, ‘This is not the music I want to play and this is not the crowd I want to see in front of me.’
As a musician, I’ve always been into jazz, fusion-progressive-rock, new age and more sophisticated stuff, you know. So that’s when I started to play more underground, and of course, that’s when I started to get complaints from the club’s managers. When eventually I was out of jobs, I sat down with Danyelino and decided to go against the current and do an “I play whatever I want all night underground” party in South Beach.
Patchwork at Blue was born and this was really the beginning of it all– simply because all of the “good music” community finally came out from their shell and came to see us perform. And Davide was one of them. So we formed a trio and started working together– finding places to play and new party ideas. One of these places was a little bar, I don’t remember the name, but it was located close to Venetian Causeway.
Davide, Danny and I came up with the idea of creating a connection between us techno lovers and the real techno world. We wanted to create a link– ergo the name LINK. And bookings after bookings starting from zero, we were able to link the Miami crowd to the music they wanted. We have big projects for the future, but as you may know we also like to surprise people.”
This weekend everybody will be coming together to celebrate both the past three years and the many years to come. Friday brings back a LINK regular in Magda alongside Marc Houle and DJ Tennis with opening duties by our friends Maurizio Ruggiero, Danyelino and Ms Mada. Gaiser headlines part two on Saturday with Bruno Pronsato and Tone Of Arc– Alejandro Sab will be starting the night off.
So a tip of my hat, cheers, courtesy, handshake, high-five and any other showing of gratitude and appreciate to the LINK group for being part of, in my opinion, one of the most genuine scenes in the country. Here’s to many more years partying together.
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